


Hunter's Moon

by sevenofspade



Category: Gwen Variants (Marvel Comics Covers)
Genre: F/F, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:10:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen's day gets weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunter's Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ectotherm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectotherm/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy reading this!
> 
> Thanks to T for the beta.

The wind tasted of ash below the scent of pine trees.

Gwen snarled and inhaled deeper, swirling the air over all the olfactive receptors at the back of her throat. Ash it was indeed, more to her chagrin than her surprise; burning evergreens and it was not forest fire season.

She breathed out and watched the steam curl up in the early morning air.

A long, long time ago, before the Breaking of the US, when villains had teamed up to defeat the heroes, she'd been a normal girl from New York. She remembered that girl fondly, but Breaking or no Breaking, that girl would have been long dead by now. 

These days, she would be surprised if even one person in a thousand knew the name of "New York", much less where it had stood. Forest had crept back over the city -- Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Hell's Kitchen, Ellis Island and the rest. Her forest had grown slowly, but it had grown.

She took off at a run towards where the forst was burning. As she ran, she pulled down her cowl. Orange was not her colour, but it worked as a warning; this forest was under her protection. Besides, the suit didn't tear, which, when you had bone claws of living metal, was a blessing.

When she'd been sixteen, long ago in New York That Was, Gwen had been bitten by a radioactive Wolverine -- no, not the animal -- and that was how she'd ended up with the claws. How she'd ended up with the living metal -- and the compulsion to howl at the moon on occasions -- was another story entirely and... Well. Let's just say it had been a rough year.

As far as Gwen knew, Logan was still around. Last she'd heard he'd either turned into a wendigo in the great far north of Canada or was living way down south, depowered and with a family. Option 1 was orders of magnitude more likely than option 2.

Gwen stopped running. Something was wrong.

Everything went black.

She woke up tied to a tree and bleeding out through a shunt in her abdomen. Whoever it was that had done this knew exactly what they were doing, because it was hooked right into her aorta. Her blood was running out into the ground and not getting absorbed anymore; she must have been here a very long time.

"Show yourself!" She shouted. Her voice was shaky.

It took her a moment to place the man who showed up. Then, of course, he introduced himself, in classic supervillain form. Baron Sinister. Because if anyone was going to survive a not-quite-apocalypse and live for ages to STILL be annoying, it'd be fucking Sinister. 

"This country doesn't have an aristocracy," Gwen said. Not one of her better come-backs. Where was Peter when you needed him?

Dead and gone, like all the rest, but at least he'd had a good go of it.

"I did not expect you to be coherent," he said. "It seems my hypothesis that X-23's extraordinary resilience was due to her genetic --"

And blah blah blah and blah blah blah. Gwen tuned him out, except for one thing.

"What the fuck did you do to Laura?"

Sinister blinked, like it took him a moment to remember that Laura was more than one letter and two digits, that she was an actual, real person with a name and a life he had just derailed. Just for that, Gwen hated his guts.

"The same as you. Every experiment needs a control group."

She was going to make fucking macramé out his guts.

As soon as she managed to free herself. She struggled against her ties, but all that did was fasten the flow of blood out of her and she nearly passed out before he left again.

Then she was alone and still bleeding.

Motherfucking _macramé_.

She passed out. She woke up, still bleeding -- seriously had he injected her with an anticoagulant? -- and passed out again.

The next time she woke up, she was no longer tied to a tree.

She jumped to her feet and fell right back down on her ass. She stayed on the ground a couple of minutes, before it occurred to her to grab the shunt and pull it out of herself. She watched the hole heal and already felt much better.

Then she looked up.

She had expected to save herself, or for Laura to do it if she got free first. She had not expected...

Whatever the hell that was.

It looked like a tree, if a tree had long blond hair. There was a face in the bark that seemed to be smiling at her. It was holding her restraint.

"What are you?" Gwen asked.

"I am Gwoot."

Okay, then.

"I'm Gwen," she said.

Gwoot nodded.

If getting bitten by Wolverine while he had been turning into a werewolf could turn her into what she was now, there was no reason not to believe that her blood, with her being what she was now, could turn a tree into something like herself. Especially if the tree was, like she suspected, a little bit alien -- even if it hadn’t been a walking, talking tree, the green eyes would’ve been a dead giveaway.

"We need to save Laura," Gwen said. Even if the two of them hadn't fallen in together -– before falling in _together_ \-- a while back, Gwen wouldn't have left Laura to Sinister.

"I am Gwoot."

"Yeah, you've said," she told the tree. Gwoot. Its name was Gwoot; if they were going to team up, she needed to call it by its proper name.

"I am Gwoot." This time the 'oo' was stretched, almost like a howl.

"Is that the only thing you can say?" They might have a problem, if it was.

"I am Gwoot."

They definitely weren't going to be able to communicate, then. Yay. Well, nothing Gwen could do about that right now, so she had to focus on helping Laura.

"Right. Which way did Sinister go?" When Gwoot opened its mouth, Gwen added, "Just point."

Gwoot pointed and Gwen took off. Gwoot followed her as the miles unfolded beneath her feet. Sinister was good at hiding his scent, but she was better and she could smell Laura now, so she was following that instead.

She slowed down about a minute later. There was something wrong with Sinister's smell. It was like there was more than one of him.

Motherfucker.

That's why she and Laura were so far apart. Because it was supposed to stop them from teaming up and if there was more than one of him, he could survey both experiments without risking cross-contamination.

But then, there was more than one of Gwen now, too, wasn't there? She turned to Gwoot.

"I'm getting Laura. Can you take care of the other Sinister?" Truth be told, as long as she saved Laura now, Gwen didn't care what happened to Sinister right away. She could always hunt him -- however many of him there were -- down later.

"I am Gwoot."

"Good."

Gwen took off again. She found Sinister in short order. She was even a little late -- but not as late as he was, given that he had Laura's foot blade right through his brain. 

Laura finished kicking Sinister off her foot. She nodded at Gwen.

"Hey," Gwen said. "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

"Being experimented on." Laura's face broke into a grin a few seconds later; let it never been said she had no sense of humour. "It's good to see you, Gwen."

"You too. I've missed you," Gwen said as she helped Laura get rid of the ropes.

"Me too." Laura stood up, stepped in close and kissed Gwen.


End file.
